Longmont party hostess arrested, loses custody of kids

A Longmont mother of four says she tried to open her apartment to troubled kids in the neighborhood who are homeless or just need a safe place to sleep for the night.

But police say the 43-year-old single parent's apartment is not a suitable living environment for children, and a gathering there Monday night was filled with alcohol and marijuana just before one of the attending teens was stabbed to death nearby.

Officers arrested Terry McCary on suspicion of misdemeanor child abuse Thursday, citing the living conditions at her home. Social workers took custody of her three children who live with her, two boys ages 14 and 8, and a 3-year-old girl.

A fourth son, 15, was already living in an alternative home due to his marijuana use and behavioral issues, according to McCary.

A judge determined Friday that McCary's children would remain in foster care at least until a May 4 hearing. The ruling, McCary said, was based partly on police evidence that included an empty gallon bag with marijuana residue and a "meth or marijuana pipe" that was recovered from McCary's trash bin.

Longmont police Cmdr. Tim Lewis said there is additional "significant evidence to support that those children, as part of that incident, were placed in circumstances that was not healthy or safe for them."

Following the court hearing, McCary denied the items found in her trash were hers. She said police are wrong about her home's conditions and what happened Monday night in the hours before the slaying of 19-year-old Logan Sisson, who, along with the four people suspected in his death, was hanging out in her apartment.

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While McCary spoke openly about her past as a drug and alcohol abuser, and her children's issues with marijuana use, she said those items aren't allowed in her home and she does her best to keep them out.

Cmdr. Lewis said that's not true, and the woman's children needed to be taken away.

"I don't do taking children away lighthearted," he said. "I felt very confident in our decision."

The mother, meanwhile, insists her apartment is a haven for troubled youth like Sisson, who visited frequently for years and was considered a family friend.

"These kids are like throw-away kids," McCary said. "They knew it was a sober, safe place to come."

McCary said Sisson showed up Monday night with his male friend, and visited often for the past nine years. It was a coincidence, she said, that Mariena Amber Harris, 19, of Longmont, and Lakesha Marie Crutcher, 20, a transient, were also hanging out at the apartment on Monday.

McCary said Sisson brought a bottle of vodka with him that evening, and was getting loud and boisterous, but wasn't causing any problems or arguments.

Police said Sisson was asked to leave after hitting on McCary -- an assertion the mother laughed at and denied.

Instead, she said "I told everybody to leave" because of the alcohol use and the late hour.

She recalls hearing Sisson briefly exchange expletives with Crutcher as he left, but there was no yelling or violence.

A few minutes later, McCary said the women still at the house said "they were going to the park to meet someone."

"I said, Do not go to the park and start any (expletive),'" McCary said.

She said she partly blames herself, and wonders what she could have done differently.

"If only I'd let Logan stay the night," she said. "I can't believe Logan was lying out there dying. They think they're invincible, but those kids will find out through Logan's death that they're not."

When police came knocking on her door on Tuesday, she said she initially told police there wasn't a party at all that night, because she was worried about losing custody of her four children.

"I knew they would try and take my kids," McCary said, breaking down into tears.

On Thursday, officers came back with a search warrant.

"Not only is his (Sisson's) life gone, now my family's life is ruined," McCary said. "This is a domino effect because four people made a serious mistake."

on the other hand, it's hard to say that the crimes she is being charged with match the punishment of losing one's children --

a really remarkable documentary that touches on this topic of state involvement in custody issues ..."dear zachary" --

in which a mother accused of murdering a child's father is allowed to continue caring for the child...until she kills herself and the child

worth renting

rsmoke

4/26/2009 3:55:42 PM

No good deed goes unpunished in Boulder county ... ever.

Sisyphus

4/25/2009 3:12:42 AM

Here's the thing............it's GREAT to do nice things for people who have less than you. I do it all the time. My husband and I have a couple that were previously homeless and they are rebuilding their lives living with us. Also, an old friend who we have just nursed back to health from ovarian cancer. She's healthy now (THANK YOU GOD!) and ready to go back home next week.

BUT....all of our kids are grown and gone. I would NEVER take in people like this if we still had kids living here.

Perhaps this lady's heart was in the right place but dammit, when you have kids....THEY HAVE TO COME FIRST.......and she blew it.

Poor judgement on Mom's part...........damn tough break for those kids.

Moosi

4/25/2009 3:37:30 AM

A Longmont mom, three kids, meth and alcohol, all under one roof.... gotta love Longmont.

wilson

4/25/2009 4:44:27 AM

Seriously some fat gun toting thug can just come in and say take the kids away because he found a pipe in the garbage and an empty bag "with marijuana residueâ and someone that was in your home got in a fight when they left?

I see stories like this and it just makes me sick to see what a nazi environment we live in today.

Maybe the mom was not that great but Were the kids malnourished? Abused?

So now the kids are off to a journey through foster care where they are much more likely to get molested and be raised by some unloving white trash getting a state check to baby sit them.

sidd

4/25/2009 8:11:00 AM

"'I don't do taking children away lighthearted,' he said."

Lewis gots well grammerly. Do the popo go to the attend high school gradually?

monkeys

4/25/2009 8:25:32 AM

sidd, are you saying that having any drugs in the house is acceptable for children? Meth is okay to have around children? Wow, I guess I am overprotective of my children. I like it that way.

S_S_Mama

4/25/2009 9:34:16 AM

Please. The environment, as described, is not appropriate for young children. Whether or not her heart was in the right place, her judgment was clearly lacking. She needs to grow up and deal with the consequences. Kudos to the PD, and all of you claiming heavy-handed abuse, fascism...whatever your beef is...you're ignorant and pathetic.

cheech24

4/25/2009 9:55:12 AM

The investigation here led the police to McCary's door. She started off lying to them about having a party in the first interview. They, the police obviously had already interviewed others who pointed them in her direction. just how stupid this lady really is still remains to be seen. Cops 101 clearly teaches you that cops are wired to dig ever deeper whenever they know that they have been lied to. I hate to see a family broken up, and certainly the foster care system is a poor substitute for raising children.But at this point anyway, I don't see any reasonable alternative. Hopefully some of this ladies relatives will step up, and take over her responsibilities. She doesn't appear to be adequately predisposed to doing so on her own. Although the people attending this party, especially those that where involved in the killing of Sisson where under the age of 21; they where in possession of, and drinking hard liquor. Bad judgment again on McCary's part. I don't buy the safe haven story she is trying to float here, her actions prove that that is a load of old stinky.We, most of us that is, have some degree of experience with drug and or alcohol abuse. Both prior to , and most likely after being of legal age, regards the alcohol. Both substances, at least in my personal experience, have been key factors in most of the poorly conceived decisions, and associated actions that I have been foolish enough to act on in my past.Lucky, and that is an understatement no one died as a result of my foolishness. That is no excuse for being stupid, but if we never admit our mistakes, we are going to make them over and over again. Live and learn.A crap load of mistakes where made here. Providing a place for under aged adolescents to get wasted in her home, was a major contributing factor in the tragedy that followed. I don't believe a thing that this lady is saying at this point. It was absolutely the right thing to do getting those children out of her care. We are most likely nowhere near the truth about the events of that night. It will all most likely surface as the active participants have to stare down the barrel of the prison terms they are facing. Until then everyone involved will have their feet held to the appropriate fire.

biker_joe

4/25/2009 11:19:05 AM

"Social workers took custody of her three children who live with her, two boys ages 14 and 8, and a 3-year-old girl."

-----

Let me guess - each kid has a different father. The spread in ages hints at random sexual encounters with uninvolved men. This woman is a train wreck, and, as always, the ones who suffer are the children. They didn't ask to be born to a hapless woman who can't provide a stable home. Now they're irreversibly in "the system", and we should all be praying to Darwin for their survival.

HowYouLikeMeNow

4/25/2009 12:35:22 PM

Longmont, Boulder, pot, meth, alcohol, whatever...just getting that out of the way. Not germane to my comment, but don't want the L v. B or M v. A crowd to run rampant.

Anyway, my point (I think it is here somewhere):

While I don't think the "super-predator" prediction of the last couple of decades has come to fruition, we are seeing a great number of disaffected, amoral late-teens, early to mid-twenties kids in our society today. I do think that is what these stabbing articles point to, not any particular prevalence of one drug (or one city) over another. The drugs are, I think, just an aspect of the culture, not the cause. The children of the Greed Generation (basically, a lot of kids born since the mid80s) are breaking out of their (somewhat) supervised homes and socializing with each other to the exclusion of any positive older (or even same age) role models. The older or more experienced persons in their life tend to come from a pool of persons from older generations who are JUST LIKE THEM (re: "Dragon Master").

Rather than mentoring, supervising, and, yes, punishing the younger generation as appropriate, they rather re-enforce the wrong-headed of ideals these kids have glommed onto. And maybe these older dirtbags tag a little young booty as well (if you are wondering why they do it).

I don't know Terry. It does sound like her heart might be in the right place...but enablers are not always the evil bastards you think they should be. Wrong place, wrong time, the victim of some other violent actors? Maybe. But if Terry's home environment is even somewhat conducive to these kind of events, and she does not actively "save" these kids from this lifestyle, maybe she just isn't doing her job as a guardian.

And Sidd, your opinion of the police and society at large aside (not quite nazi, if you are allowed to voice your opposition, methinks), these kids problems are lack of or incorrect supervision. I too hate that police and government act in these situations...but the situation was there before the "fat gun-toting thug" ever showed up.

And monkeys...give the guy a break. We all say things incorrectly when we speak. Lewis is police acting a speaker, not a speaker acting as police. As I have said in other posts...working stiff like you or me.

CalvinRankin

4/25/2009 1:09:15 PM

Posted by S_S_Mama-sidd, are you saying that having any drugs in the house is acceptable for children?

_________

What about alcohol?

It is so bad to have an empty bag with residue from some flowers but it is acceptable for people to bring home a 18 pack of bud of a fifth of whiskey every night?

Why is alcohol acceptable and not marijuana? Because a corrupt law enforcement system says it is ok?

sidd

4/25/2009 2:25:47 PM

Mother of the Year!

Puck

4/25/2009 5:16:44 PM

If she had a lawyer they would tell her to stop giving interviews! She is making a great wrongful death case against herself.

marlasinger

4/25/2009 6:10:26 PM

Sidd- Alcohol is legal, drugs are not. I don't approve of alcohol either. You are arguing with someone who lost a father to a drunk driver. Alcoholic households are no place to raise a child either, but in the letter of the law, it is legal to have it in your home.

Also, no parent is perfect. If they think they are, they are the worst kind. However, as parents, we must raise our children to the best of our ability. A parent makes many mistakes, but when you allow illegal actions and opportunities to enter your house with your children, there is no excuse. Strange people, transients, drugs, alcohol and I'm sure the list goes on....this is not to the best of her ability. This is very poor judgement by someone being a friend to her children, not a parent.

S_S_Mama

4/25/2009 7:21:02 PM

I am not saying this lady does or doesn't deserve to have her kids removed--I don't have all the facts so I won't comment on her situation.

But, hands down, it is a lot more dangerous to have alcohol in your house than pot, if you have kids.

Worse case scenario for pot: kid finds stash, smokes entire thing, eats all the snacks in the pantry, falls asleep, wakes up with drool on face, has major headache and gets grounded.

But, to add, I really don't think it was the marijuana residue on a baggie that got the kids yanked--combine the drug use with underage drinking, not to mention a little thing called murder, and what can the cops do? If they left the kids there and something went wrong, they'd be liable.

wildflowerseed@hotmail.com

4/25/2009 11:20:21 PM

Mom?

mildlyamused

4/26/2009 6:47:29 AM

Posted by marlasinger-"If she had a lawyer they would tell her to stop giving interviews! She is making a great wrongful death case against herself"

___________________

Yes I can see it now, the victims family will go and see one of the Lawyers on Main st on top of the pawn shop and he will say "let me look into this caseâ .

So he dives but party moms house in the 'bad neighborhoodâ in Longmont and looks it over.

Rabbit ears with tin foil in the front window=.00$

Broken car in the drive way with no aluminum rims =23.07$

Pitbull in the yard tied to truck tire with aluminum rim =3.98$

Small pile of cooper pipe and speaker wire in the shed=1.54$

Pulls out calculator $27.59 the odds of everything getting liquidated before the trail ends 78%.

Call victims family and tells them that "I cannot take the case because I am so busy but I can refer you to someone in Greeley that canâ .

sidd

4/26/2009 7:54:35 AM

With respect to marijuana, ignorance is no excuse for the law. I seriously doubt that people whose entire argument rests on "it's illegal" truly have that much respect for the law.

For Holier than Thou crowd: Lots of common "legal" items in households are not suitable for consumption by children: cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, intimate moments between consenting adults, guns, cigarettes, television programming, the internet, and so on. You simply take precautions to keep certain things out of reach.

rocknwsc

4/26/2009 8:41:38 AM

"are you saying that having any drugs in the house is acceptable for children?"

By that reasoning, children should be taken away from parents who have a six pack of beer in the fridge.

JesusThinksYoureAJerk

4/26/2009 9:01:30 AM

Meth, maybe you've got a point. Pot? No bleepin' way. I really don't care if it is illegal, because that's rapidly becoming history. It's taking too long to end this pot apartheid, but it is clearly on the way out.

If you look at the right and wrong, compared to the legal and illegal, you get a better picture.

Cigarette smoking around children - wrong, legal

Alcoholic boozing around children - wrong, legal

Marijuana smoking around children - harmless, illegal

Kids abandoned on the street - wrong, legal

Mother doing the best she can - right, illegal?

In regards to the kids probably having different fathers, their lives predestined for failure - that sounds right on. I'm definitely not cool with that. We need to hand out birth certificates, and not when a kid is born. Before the kid is ALLOWED to be born. 7 billion people on Earth, we don't need this indiscriminate human littering.

claroofusjones@comcast.net

4/26/2009 9:06:17 AM

Claroof, I like you post, yet I must point out that it is NOT legal, in this country or in many, many other countries, to abandon underage kids to the street. (see the recent case of the german couple who abandoned mom's kids in an italian restaurant.) It is highly illegal--yet also hard to deal with. See, social services is there to remove kids from unfit homes, yet the idea in general is that "the system" is not the best place for kids, and that even poorly run homes are better than strings of foster homes. When they get a throw-away case, what can they do? They spend time trying to get the kid back into the home--only most of these poor kids have little home life to speak of. It's a vicious circle. Parenting really does take "a village," but unfortunately we too-often leave it up to the village idiots!!

wildflowerseed@hotmail.com

4/26/2009 10:33:20 AM

Oh, but I don't like that bit about regulating births--have you read ANYTHING about China lately?

BTW, Why are people spreading slander that the kids having different fathers? Where did the report say anything about that? And since when is that illegal, or a reason to have kids removed? Plus, where is the moral outrage directed at the so-called absent dads?!?!